Love the scaling mechanic concept - but it's highly flawed. SUGGESTION.

idk

STEVIL wrote: »

michael.albertsenb16_ESO wrote: »

STEVIL wrote: »

michael.albertsenb16_ESO wrote: »

Hey there.

One of the things I love about ESO is the One Tamriel change - that granted all players access to the majority of the content by scaling them to CP 160.

However, I think it's very flawed in terms of execution.

Currently, the entire journey from level 1-50 feels off for new characters.

Why? Because you keep rising and falling in power due to how gear is CONSTANTLY outdated - and how you will NEVER stand a chance compared to CP 160+ players when it comes to numeric output.

You go back and forth and never FEEL that you're progressing your character. You're utterly dissuaded from investing in gear above blue level, because you know that it will be outdated each and every level.

The first 160 champion points feel like catching up rather than gaining power.

I suggest the following changes:

Completely give up the concept of level 1-50.

Start new characters at what currently constitutes level 50 with 0 CP.

Keep the idea of sharing CP across accounts.

Instead of using levels - make a SEPARATE XP-based tracker that grants skill points ONLY - instead of levels.

The result:

Still very alt-friendly because CP is still shared.

New characters will get the proper experience of a power curve - where they slowly get stronger and gain new powers

Alts will retain the feeling of progress due to the separate skill point progression - whilst retaining the power they previously earned with CP.

Gear progression will be largely the same - except players will want to change at every 10 CPs instead of every level. I would personally prefer changing the gear tiers to happen at 20 CPs instead, though.

RE the bold - as for the up and down regarding gear leveling, it was much the same in the non-scaled game, thios is only different in terms of the labels showing on the character and inventory screens but not the overall results.

Non-scaled: a lvl 20 char wearing lvl 20 gear fought lvl 20 foes and finished the fight in X seconds.
Scaled: a lvl 20 character scaled to 160 in level 20 gear fights a 160 monster and finishes the fight in about the same x seconds.

non-scaled: a level 40 character in level 20 gear fights a level 40 foe and finished the fight in x+y seconds
scaled: a level 40 character scaled to 160 wearing level 20 gear fights a 160 foe and finishes the fight in x+y seconds.

in the above case because the gear is under-leveled the fight is harder and takes longer.

if you did not keep your gear scaled up as you leveled, in the current system or the old, your NET went down vs foes of your character level.

The only change now is the labelling.

As for non-cp characters vs cp160+ characters, well, they are quite a bit more advanced than you are, so why should you match them numerically? Scaling is not meant to make everyone even in every way.

As for your suggestions, i would replace it with a simple mechanic: When you start a new character, you can start it at any level up to 50 that you have attained on any other character. At that start, you will have all the atrtribute and skill points that come with the levels you gained. You will not have skill line unlocked or xp in skills but you will have skill points and atts. So, some questing for SP and skyshards will likely be needed as will combat to gain skill line xp and unlocks.

i do not see any reason for a different skill progression xp thingy. i dont see any reason to monkey with other new things. just give you the option to choose repeat the character leveling sequence or not whichever you prefer.

Ehm, no, my suggestion is absolutely nothing like the non-scaling version of the game.

Why? Because in the non-scaling version of the game you were limited to areas based on level.

With my system, you're going to be effectively level 50 from the start - so you can tackle ANY area. It will just start out being harder - because enemies will be scaled to 160 in terms of base stats. They could reduce this to any CP amount to make it easier, if that's too hard.

That's a pretty gargantuan difference.

The reason you need a separate skill progression "thingy" - is to ensure that alt characters have skill upgrade progression to look forward to. If not, then a CP630 alt wouldn't experience any progression at all except for gear upgrades. That's not fun.

Also, your examples are missing another key difference:

With my suggestion, a character using a level 10 sword WILL experience an upgrade when going to a level 11 sword (assuming it's the same color).

With the current One Tamriel system - the character will NOT experience an upgrade by going to a level 11 sword UNLESS he's very close to that level. Otherwise, the scaling mechanic will DOWNSCALE his stats because he's going to be using a lower level sword than what's expected. Meaning, with the current system - if you don't upgrade constantly, then a future upgrade might actually mean your character is STILL less effective than he was when he was lower level. That can't happen with my idea.

That's another reason I'm making this suggestion - to ensure that every single bit of progress is felt as actual progress, and not a potential downgrade from when you were a lower level.

first bold - i dont know where you thought i compared your suggestion to the non-scaled game, i did not. i actually said very little about your proposal in fact.

My comparison was between the current scaled game and the non-scaled game in terms of the gear causing "sense of progression" ups and downs and that that did not change from old to now except in the cosmetic form of labelling. being under-geared then and now made fights harder and the gains seem less.

Now of course, some might be upset that their tooltips seem labelled lower regardless of how the fights go or may feel better if their tooltips are higher even if the fights dont reflect gains but again, to me, labels are cosmetics. What matters to me are results and both pre-scaled and post-scaled now, under-gear meant less capable in fights.

Second bold on travel - the ability to go anywhere at scaled level is already in the game now, we dont need anew system to give us what we already have.

third bold - any character swinging a lvl 10 sword now who equips a lvl 11 sword now will see a change in their results if no other factors such as color or character levels intervene. The lvl 10 sword was under-geared and likely costing them some degree of base damage. So if this is the goal of your system, we already have this, so again, no need for new system to give us the result you just highlighted.

Your example in italics is incorrect. At most any character level i know of, trading in a level 10 sword for a level 11 sword will gain you some results. maybe there are some cases where the result is too small for you, i dont know, but here is a question for you - why is this character who is much higher than 10 upgradingh from a lvl 10 weapon to a level 11 weapon?

but here is a test i just ran using a lvl 10 and lvl 12 sword - since you cannot craft a lvl 11 anything.
lvl 10 sword for a top tier closer to 100 cp than not character shows tooltip of 299. A level 12 323. So the scaling system did not make upping your sword from 10-12 less useful for a high level character at all.

Now of course it is not as useful as a lvl 160 sword would be.

But AFAIK your 10-11 sword example as stated is just flat out incorrect in the current scaling system.

There are lots of things you could have meant to say but i wont go chasng down that rabbit hole.


As to the final bold, if again you are referencing the "feel" of under-gearing as you level up your character, that is the same now as it was before scaling, so that is not a flaw caused by 1Tam but a factor that has always been there. You can find many guides from early on that emphasize that you need to keep upping your gear, not necessarily every level. as the loses are not overpowering in many cases. Same as now.

The difference now is you always find gear from drops at your level, making it easier to keep your gear up to snuff.

As for the skill progression thingy, right now folks gain skill after 50 (and often need to) by skyshards and quests and dungeons and the like. So skill progression is there if they want to go do it. Sure there is a maximum cap somewherre but by the time you reach that point its likely you dont have anywhere useful to spend skills.

i mean, what is the point of say my cp 800+ gaining more skill points that just add to the unassigned skill points she has now? other than a change in labels - which gets us back to cosmetics? So adding a new unlimited skill point gain from Xp alone - that seems to be a play at removing or devaluing the gains from questing, sharding, dungeoning and even pvp advancing - skill points - by providing yet another gain to straight out grinding.

is that you goal in that part - to just make more skills more accessible to grinders by permanently locking skill point gain to xp?

Again, i am in favor of the choice at chargen to start at any level you have reached with any other character and gain skill points and attribute points as appropriate to that level gain. That should enable one to skip a lot of the lower level scaling issues after the first time. It would seem to address many of your goals but not add-in more skills for grinders or require any new systems or fundamental overhaul of existing parts. it would leave lots of progression even for that "new" 630 alt - gaining more skills, unlocking skills and lines etc.

Exactly. And the resistance new players experience when playing with lower level gear, then see what updating gear to the current level does is beneficial to teaching new players about gearing. Otherwise they hit true lvl 50 they have no reason to think they need to update their gear.

As good points all around.